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Monday, June 22, 2009

I just finished Bluebell and listed her last night on eBay. She was really fun to do. Her wings were hand dyed with blue Kool-Aid. They turned a really lovely shade of blue. I was inspired by Chrissy P.(The Felted Chicken) from her blogpost last week. It was pretty awesome. I hard a hard time finding the blue. I finally found some on the shelf of the General store in Randsburg. I think it was about 5 years old. But who cares. I don't think Kool-Aid can go bad anyway. I bought their whole stock of 6. First, I needle felted them and I then boiled them in the Kool=Aid for about 15 minutes. It took 2 packs to get them this shade of blue.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Here it is, the third week of the great experiment. I'm back to reserves. The others did well with the higher starting prices. But I think that I'll give this a try for a couple of weeks just to say I gave it a fair shot. Hint ~ The reserve on both of them is $95.00.

Presently. I'm taking a break from felting to give my poor arm a rest and am working on a pattern for a sewn teddy friend. The mohair that I have is perfect for a little lion cub. I'm a bit ambicious because it's only my third sewn teddy ever. I'm trying to make him fully jointed and posable. eyes mouth and everything. I hope it's not a waste of mohair. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'm going to try it out on muslin first. I'll let you know how it progresses

So here's first, Glowie. She was designed after a little opossum baby who was found nesting in my Christmas ornaments in the basement. She and her brothers and sisters were always there begging for veggie dogs and watermelon whenever we would fire up the barbeque. I'm particu;arly proud of her needle felted watermelon slice. I love making felt food.

I even included some felt food with Ginger, the little mouse. She has a needle felted fortune cookie. Her fortune reads "On the waves of your dreams you glide forward towards the shores of your better life."

Monday, June 8, 2009

Well, I just finished these two little guys and listed them last night on ebay So far having a reserve on my auctions has worked a lot better than I had thought. But my eBay fees have more than tripled. So I'm starting these two with higher starting bids with no reserves. We'll see if they do as well. If not it's back to reserves. It's kind of a good thing that summer is sooo slow. I've got quite a few commissions lined up. My problem with commissions is that I tend to fuss and fret over them more. They tend to take more time. However they do stretch me and make me perfect my craft. So it's a good thing. The other good thing about it being kind of slow is that my sister and her husband are visiting me from Indiana. They'll be here on June 20. I have to make sure that I've got enough items done in advance so I won't be poking wool the whole time they're here.

Last night I watched Werner Herzog's documentary,"Grizzly Man", for the first time. It's about the naturalist, Timothy Treadwell who lived with the Grizzlies in Alaska for thirteen summers and was killed along with his girlfriend by a Grizzly. I think the guy was a wannabe bear and a wannabe Steve Irwin. He saw himself as the lone defender of the bears. It's really a tragedy. But he should have known that it had been a very lean summer for the bears and that they needed to gain enough weight in order to hibernate. Staying so late in the Fall was a fool hardy thing to do and even more foolish to take another person along with him. I think he had a death wish or an unimaginably huge ego to think that the bears would leave him alone. The upshot is that it was a very good movie that led me to ponder all kinds of things.

As an animal artist, I've often wondered that if my cute little wild ones help foster the "Bambi' syndrome where nature is just there to pet and hold and to sastisfy our need for companionship. We as human beings tend to either anthropromorphize animals or to think that they are so much lesser and different than mankind. I think there's middle ground. They all deserve our kindness and compassion. Animals should be appreciated for who and what they are and not what we hope them to be.

Monday, June 1, 2009

JadeStarting bid $9.95Buy It Now $300Reserve Price $165.00(Please click on Jade's name to view her auction)

It's been a while since my last post. I've been busily working on my new website. It's not quite complete yet. I guess it's a work in progress. It all started when I found out that googlepages was migrating platforms. The new platform doesn't support Java script and CSS. Hence all of my furious work to get a new site up and running before June 1 (today). So if you're interested my new site still has the same address, www,artbyrjandreae.com. It's just being hosted elsewhere. One new thing that I've added is a store where my items maybe purchased from. Unfortunately, it does not have inventory control. So for the time being, I'm offerring only my felted pastries and portrait commissions on my site. Hopefully. I'll be able to offer my one of a kind pieces there, too, in the near future.

On another front, Summer is nearly here and eBay is slowing down as folks are spending more time outdoors and less time in front of the computer. So, I've instituted reserve pricing on my ebay items. My average reserve is $95.00. My low reserve is $66.00. It's higher for the larger works, like Jade pictured above. She has a reserve of $165.00. I hated doing this. But it was either this or giving up my donations to Sarvey Wildlife and Old Dog haven. I chose my charities. Also if my items started to go for too little, people may get the idea that that's what my art is worth and would not bid higher when things start to pick up on eBay.

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Bullet is a very special fellow with some very critical veterinary needs. His first exams were a whopping $539.35 and that's just the beginning to his long road to recovery from a serious skin infection and allergies. Without the help of Bull Terrier Rescue, Inc. and his foster home this sweet bully boy may have been put to sleep. Any amount will go a long way to help Bullet and others like him. Please donate to Bull Terrier Rescue, INC.